Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor ("The Choral") - movements poll

the second time I ever performed this was the first time I ever sang at Symphony Hall in Boston and the night I started dating my wife

ode to her

that's awesome. My parents met through a choir -- my dad sang in it as a child and my mom sang in it as an adult. My dad went to see it when my mom was singing in it, and I believe one of them noticed the other and asked the director to introduce them.

mov. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPwyEkIJRfo
mov. 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BacvSXcQRso
mov. 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Z3-jfZKMU
mov. 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HvGLQrJAd8

4, no contest (though it's all good)

I actually picked #1. I would pick both 1 and 2 over 4, but it's damn close.

2, the scherzo is banging.

There's really no boring or filler moment in the whole thing.

2 vs. 4, though 4 in my heart

I've been thinking a lot about the opening of the first movement and how weird it is, it's like dissonant consonance. The original power chords.

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even though I think of Beethoven as well overshadowed by people who came later on the adagio front, I am an adagio junkie and this one is worth the vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLvGOT4sbS4

voted 1 but singing along to 4 with random german words (schaudenfreude, bildungsroman, etc.) is the funnest

i am a sophisticated appreciator

haha, I do that too

fahrvegnugen weinerschnitzel / eine kleine frankenstein

ü - "nügen"

still not voting though. impossible.

So difficult. First movement has one of the most spine tingling openings to any piece of music ever. I think the winner has to be the 2nd or 4th movement, very hard to decide.

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Cool results

What are y'all's favorite recordings of this? Lately I have been kind of liking Claudio Abbado with Berlin, and right now I am checking out an old Furtwangler recording on rec of some classical music board nerds.

my go-to is the fricsay but there's tons of good ones honestly

also i really hope abbado's has sex (i'm a) as an encore

I also got put on the Szell recording, it's kind of like what the Abbado version is going for but even better.

the best movement won!

I like Furtwangler, Vanska, Wand. Would like to hear the Munch recording which is on one of the volumes of Great Conductors of the Century. My man Monteux recorded this for a different label than the rest of his beethoven cycle and it has a poor rep. Shame, I would love to have a Monteux/LSO or VPO/Decca LvB 9.

Barenboim I have but haven't got around to listening to. Should be good since he tries to be a Furtwangler epigone.

It's interesting to see how period-instrument performers tackle the ninth in recorded LvB cycles. Usually they have to greatly enlarge their forces and succumb to romantic inflections to make the piece work.

No Ninth thread would be complete without mention of Susan McCarry's scholarly thesis that this symphony is a musical enactment of rape...

Didn't she come up with that theory like WAY after Clockwork Orange?

i've got a couple of versions of this, one from 1962 by walter goehr who was a german jew that fled the nazis to england in the 30s and went on to score the music for david lean's great expectations and conducted the uk premiere of turangalila amongst other things. kind of just an adequate performance afaict, made worse by the fact that you have to turn the record over *halfway through the adagio* right at the quietest, most delicate moment(hoves didn't really write this thing around the lp format did he?). the other one i have is h von k's version from his 60s cycle, and that one is storming tbh. i know it's a tired thing to say but the way the sound shimmers and shakes on that is fantastic. oh i also have a record called 'karajan in reheasal' which is him putting the orchestra through their paces for the 9th from that same era, but i haven't actually got round to listening to that yet.

Every thread ever would be complete without a mention of Susan McClary.

is there a name for the kind of completion that only occurs when something is omitted?

One of the things I was thinking about super-popularized classical pieces is that you often get simplified versions of them in popular culture that lose the best nuances. For example it occurred to me that one of my favorite things about the Ode to Joy is the way the last "A" section of the melody (if you think of it as AABA) has that full-beat anticipation on the F#, like that's a crucial part of the melody and it's much more boring and stupefying if you just play the last A section the same as the other two.